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Yeah, I forgot about dfield and pplane... Those are great tools, which of course, are only available for Matlab. I''m sure that similar things exist for the others as well, though, just not as well known.

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For symbolic manipulation there is also the symbolic toolbox for Matlab. If i am not totaly wrong it is built on the maple symbolic core, but plugged into Matlab.

Myself i use only matlab, but thats becouse i got a student version from the uni i attended (a short while As with most high-end software i don''t really think it matters that much exactly which tool you ues, the big difference is in knowing your tool and using it correct way...

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Both are damn good packages and both extendable with libs etc you can get/write if you like. I use maple, it can be very frustrating, the output it gives you when it cant do something is cryptic at best but where it really comes into its own is writing procedures. You can create quite complex routines to solve all manner of problems in a language with a very simple syntax.

It does seem that Maple is pretty much the standard for educational use. It''s developed at Waterloo uni in Ontario I think.

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quote:Original post by thebolt00 If i am not totaly wrong it is built on the maple symbolic core, but plugged into Matlab.

I believe you are correct. At least this used to be the case.

quote:Original post by thebolt00 Myself i use only matlab, but thats becouse i got a student version from the uni i attended (a short while As with most high-end software i don''t really think it matters that much exactly which tool you ues, the big difference is in knowing your tool and using it correct way...

As far as I can tell, Matlab is more popular at some research institutions, including NASA here in the USA. We worked with them on one of the Next Generation Space Telescope (NGST) designs. We have a technology that simplifies development of models for structural analysis of complex objects ("interface element" technology), and used that to feed a Matlab simulation of the structural vibrations that are caused by solar radiation acting on orbiting objects.

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I''ve never used Maple, but I use Mathmatica and Matlab all the time. I can''t stand Matlab, but some of its packages make engineering work go faster. If it had a better syntax, I would probably like it more. It like short little function names, and I like long descriptive function names. Also, at least at our school computers, the help sucks.

One thing I really like about Mathematica is you can use symbols rather than words for a lot of stuff. When you plan on printing out a notebook and showing it to somebody, its nice to be able to use proper mathematical notation rather than function names that may or may not give all the information to somebody not familiar with Mathematica. I don''t know if maple supports this or not, but matlab certainly doesn''t.

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I must say, that having used all 3 I (like most people in the mathematics department) favour maple. It is an excellent package (though the undergraduates have to use MatLab, because the department thinks they are not worth spending the extra on for maple).

Please bear in mind that, as for today, only a tiny fraction ofthe known to us Maple bugs identified by our GEMM automaton hasbeen described; we keep working on the next major upgrade ofthe Maple Bugs Encyclopaedia coming soon.

Also, you could find extensive comments about Maple 9 quality on the comp.soft-sys.math.maple news server or access it via http://groups.google.com/groups?hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&safe=off&group=comp.soft-sys.math.maple

MMA 5 got certainly better than MMA 4.2.1, and it has almost thesame price as Maple 9.

The most inexpensive is Derive 6 www.derive.com which is fairlystrong and helpful for any non-math students and even for math students, it''s only $300 or so. Being an expert in the field, Iclaim that Derive 6 is the most mathematically correct and reliable commercial computer algebra system.

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Mathematica is not very good at solving, really. I had to give one equation (two equations that could be quickly reduced to essentially finding 4th order polynom''s roots) to my friend and he solved it for me in Maple, it took his computer maybe 10 minutes, less than 30 anyways, and I had been waiting Mathematica give me an answer for several hours with a better computer.. This is not a general indicator because I haven''t used Maple but just a one-time experience where Maple was way faster.